Introduction
Witness supports integration with many different types of external systems through the use of plugins. These are stand-alone software libraries which are dynamically loaded by the Management Server and have the ability to pass data and events to and from the external system. This document describes the process of setting up the Milestone XProtect Plugin.
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The Milestone Plugin extends the capability of Witness by enabling UI recording, alarms and bookmark integration with XProtect. Witness is able to directly support the majority of PTZ cameras on the market, however it takes full advantage of the recording capabilities and alarm management within the Milestone software to provide the operator with comprehensive incident management along with tightly coupled post-incident analysis.
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Milestone XProtect Requirements
Milestone XProtect 2016 Professional or higher
Version 2016, 2016 R2 or 2019 R1
Edition Professional / Corporate or higher
Basic User must be set up for a Witness system user with full camera permissions
The Modern Browser plugin (Chromium) is required to host the AdvanceGuard AdvanceGuard® or Sea360® Web UI
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The requirements are the same for OEM editions of the software including Siemens Siveillance. |
Witness Requirements
The Witness installation needs to be licensed to use the Milestone plugin and the required number of cameras
The Milestone plugin needs to be installed
At least one camera must be configured to generate bookmarks
The Mobile Server must be installed and licenced to use the AdvanceGuard AdvanceGuard® or Sea360® Web UI within the XProtect Smart Client
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The plugin can be selected during setup and will automatically install the files in the correct locations. If you have already installed Witness without the Milestone plugin, you can run the setup to modify your installation to include the Milestone plugin. |
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Copy the Tungsten.Integration.Milestone.Client.Plugin folder from the management server install or the UI install in the plugins folder: %ProgramFiles%\Navtech Radar\Witness\Plugins\Tungsten.Integration.Milestone.Client.Plugin onto each pc that you wish to use the Milestone Client, at this location: %ProgramFiles%\Siemens\Siveillance VMS Video Client\MIPPluggins
The plugin can be verified in the client by clicking help>about:
-20210609-074036.png?version=1&modificationDate=1623224454812&cacheVersion=1&api=v2&width=272)
Then add these permissions:
Configuring Milestone XProtect
Once the software has been installed, and the software licences have been activated, the system must be configured. Please refer to
Open the Management Client after installation.: This is where you configure and maintain your system and features.
Add hardware devices to your system.: When you open your system for the first time, the Advanced configuration wizard help assists you to add hardware devices, such as cameras, to your system and configure them with user names and passwords.
Configure cameras. : You can specify a wide variety of settings for each camera connected to your system. Settings include video format, resolution, motion detection sensitivity, where to store and archive recordings, any pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) preset positions, association with microphones, speakers and more.
Configure events, input and output. : Use system events, for example based on input from sensors, to automatically trigger actions in your system. For example: starting or stopping recording on cameras, switching to a particular video frame rate, making PTZ cameras move to specific preset positions. Also use events to activate hardware output, such as lights or sirens.
Configure alarms. : You can configure alarms to be generated for Milestone system events, but all Witness system events and live events are automatically, dynamically integrated. The Alarms feature also handles general alarms settings and alarm logging. Alarms appear in the alarm manager in XProtect Smart Client. Here, you can view and manage alarms to ease overview and to delegate and handle alarms. You can, for example, reassign alarms, change their status or comment on alarms.
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See the Milestone documentation: https://www.milestonesys.com/globalassets/techcomm/ltsb/provms/english-united-states/index.htm?toc.htm?9073.htm for further information |
Creating a User and Role
The term users primarily refers to users who connect to the surveillance system through their clients. You can configure such users in two ways:
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As a minimum, the Witness user role will require the following global permissions:
Cameras → Read
Cameras → Bookmarks (Full control)
Alarms → Full Control
Filtering Cameras
On Milestone systems that have a large number of cameras it may be really beneficial to filter the camera list in Witness to show only the cameras being controlled by the Witness software, This can be achieved using permissions, which involves ensuring the global read permissions for all cameras are unset and instead only add the read option to the required devices. To filter the cameras, follow these steps:1.
Ensure you have a Witness user and a dedicated Witness Role in the Milestone system.
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Ensure that the Witness user has been allocated to the Witness group.
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Select the Witness role and select the Overall Security settings. Select Cameras and ensure that neither Full Control or Read is allowed, but allow all the bookmark options:
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Select Alarms and ensure all options are enabled:
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Save your changes.
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Select the Device settings for the same security role and on the cameras which you want to appear in Witness, select the Read permission:
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By default all other cameras should not have the Read permission enabled and therefore will not appear in Witness.
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Save the settings.
Configuring the Modern Browser Plugin
The Modern Browser plugin available here: https://developer.milestonesys.com/s/article/alternative-browser-plugins-for-the-XProtect-Smart-Client-howto is a Chromium based project and provides a modern HTML 5 client. This is required to run the AdvanceGuard Web UI because the built-in Internet Explorer browser is not supported.
The plugin installer can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/cascadia-technology/ModernBrowser/releases. Once installed the plugin can be added to a XProtect Smart Client layout and configured with AdvanceGuard Web URL.
Configuring the Witness Plugin
The Milestone Plugin will appear as a node under the Integration Configurations folder within the Configuration Tree.
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Use TLS: Enable TLS for end-to-end communications security between Witness and Milestone.
Adding Additional Servers
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On larger Milestone systems that include additional servers for either load or redundancy, or both, it may be necessary to add these servers to the configuration. The primary server should always be added in the main part of the configuration and only additional recording and events servers should be added here. To add additional servers:1.
Select Edit on the plugin configuration.
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Select the + button in the Milestone Servers list.
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Complete the relevant server details.
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Repeat steps 2 → 3 as necessary.
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Select Save when complete.
Mapping Cameras
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Once the plugin has successfully connected to the Milestone Server it will retrieve a list of configured cameras. The mapping configuration is required to map each of the cameras configured in Witness to the corresponding cameras in Milestone. This process ensures that Witness creates bookmarks for the correct camera in response to an alarm in Witness. To map the cameras:1.
Select Edit on the plugin configuration.
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For each Witness camera select the appropriate Milestone camera from the drop down list.
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Select Save when complete.
Note that you can assign multiple Milestone cameras to a single Witness camera. This has the advantage of using a single camera to create bookmarks in multiple video feeds on the VMS. This is required for specific camera models that support dual optics.
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Note that the UI camera is mapped in the main configuration, not in this list. Please see the previous section Configuring the Plugin in Witness. |
Milestone XProtect Smart Client
The XProtect Smart Client is the desktop UI for Milestone XProtect server. On opening the client:1.
Under the Live tab, drag and drop the available cameras into the viewing slots.
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The UI Stream and Camera(s) will be viewed concurrently.
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Use the Playback tab to review alarms, and search through all recorded video.
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Alarms can be managed and reviewed under the Alarm Manager tab.
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For the UI to be streamed, Witness must have a separate PPI Panel open, with UI Stream set to Enabled. |
Milestone XProtect Web Client
"XProtect Web Client is a web-based client application for viewing, playing back and sharing video. It provides instant access to the most commonly used surveillance functions, such as viewing live video, play back recorded video, print and export evidence. Access to features depends on individual user rights which are set up in the management client. To enable access to the XProtect Web Client, you must have a XProtect Mobile server to establish the connection between the XProtect Web Client and your system. The XProtect Web Client itself does not require any installation itself and works with most Internet browsers. Once you have set up the XProtect Mobile server, you can monitor your XProtect system anywhere from any computer or tablet with Internet access (provided you know the right external/Internet address, user name and password)." - © 2019 Milestone Systems A/S
The XProtect Web Client is the online UI for Milestone's video streaming. It is by default only accessible on the local network, but can be exposed to the public network for remote access capabilities. To open the web client:1.
Open up the Network explorer, OR type the XProtect Web Client's address directly into the web browser, of any computer connected to the local network.
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Input the User username and password.
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The Live tab will have all camera views displayed.
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The Investigate tab is a simplified Playback, in order to search through the recorded video.
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The Alarms tab lists all alarms, but the list can be filtered to specific parameters.
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XProtect Client Plugin
The XProtect Client Plugin is a separate plugin designed by Navtech, to be utilised with the Milestone product. It is used with the XProtect Client application to automate certain actions for the operator. This includes automatically displaying relevant video feeds in response to an operator selecting a target in AdvanceGuard® or Sea360®. In order for the XProtect plugin to work correctly then each operator must have the same username in both Milestone and AdvanceGuard® or Sea360®.
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If using Single Sign-On (SSO) for the XProtect VMS software we recommend that you do the same for AdvanceGuard® or Sea360®. This will ensure that the operator shares the same user name in both applications. |
To use the feature, the same operator must be logged into both the Milestone UI and AdvanceGuard®. They can select (latch) tracks in the AdvanceGuard® or Sea360®, and these tracks will then be followed by cameras controlled by Milestone and the relevant video stream will be displayed in the Milestone client UI. Latched tracks will be highlighted in the AdvanceGuard® or Sea360® UI which all users can see, however, the video feeds for latched tracks will only be displayed within the Milestone UI of the user who selected them.
XProtect Client Plugin Requirements
AdvanceGuard® v4.10.0.747 or higher, or Sea360® v1 or higher.
Milestone XProtect / Siveillance Server 2014 or higher
Milestone XProtect / Siveillance Client 2016 or higher
Setup Procedure for the XProtect Client Plugin
This is the Setup Procedure for the Milestone XProtect Client Plugin for AdvanceGuard® or Sea360®.
Copy the Tungsten.Integration.Milestone.Client.Plugin folder from the management server install or the UI install in the plugins folder: %ProgramFiles%\Navtech Radar\Witness\Plugins\Tungsten.Integration.Milestone.Client.Plugin onto each pc that you wish to use the Milestone Client, at this location: %ProgramFiles%\Siemens\Siveillance VMS Video Client\MIPPluggins
The plugin can be verified in the client by clicking help>about:
-20210609-074036.png?version=1&modificationDate=1623224454812&cacheVersion=1&api=v2&width=319)
Then add these permissions:
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